Gill Cullen slid into the passenger seat of the police car parked outside Anna Clarke’s house and turned to her colleague.
‘What did you make of her?’
Jay Storer glanced in the mirror before pulling away. ‘Pretty weird as far as weirdos go. Thought she was going to knock your head off when you asked to use her loo.’
‘I swear she was lying or at least compromising the truth but why would she do that? As far as I understand it, she was just a random witness of the accident; she didn’t know either of the drivers involved.’
‘Let’s face it, some people are just weird and there’s no logic behind it.’ He shrugged. ‘She’s probably just making the most of the attention. We’ve dealt with that sort before, haven’t we?’
A couple of years earlier a child had gone missing and local volunteers organised a thorough search of the area.
One of the main organisers brought himself to police attention. He seemed to be everywhere at once, getting in the way and shadowing police activity. He even started questioning people himself and reporting what they said back to officers.
Happily, the little girl was found safe at a friend’s house and only then did the man lose interest and make himself scarce.
It was enough to show Gill just how strangely some people could behave; seemingly, just to get themselves in the limelight of an investigation.
Gill stared bleakly out of the window as the car moved past rows of sooty-brick terraced houses and boarded-up shops.
She couldn’t shake her gut feeling that there was more to Anna Clarke than first met the eye.
Eccentric was probably a kinder word than weird. After all, this woman held down a responsible job and lived quite independently and capably on her own.
To her credit, Anna Clarke had also stayed with the victim at the scene of the accident until the ambulance arrived.
Yet she had been very obviously spooked when Gill and her colleague had arrived at her house and proceeded to act in a textbook guilty manner for no apparent reason.
The last time Gill checked, it wasn’t illegal to burn rubbish in your own backyard. Her own dad did it all the time, regularly infuriating neighbours who had just pegged out neat lines of damp laundry.
Despite all this, Gill still had reservations about the people involved in the Green Road incident. In fact, this whole seemingly run-of-the-mill accident left a bad taste in her mouth.
They hadn’t been able to speak to Liam Bradbury yet because of his memory loss and trauma, and getting to see the driver of the other vehicle, Amanda Danson, was proving more difficult than it should be.
After posted letters were seemingly ignored, Gill had personally called at both houses with a colleague to hand deliver letters requesting that Mr Bradbury and Miss Danson make statements down at the station. Two days later, Gill was still waiting for a response.
No representative for Mr Bradbury, who had clearly come off worse in the incident, had been in touch as far as she knew, so Gill had no real reason to put the pressure on Amanda Danson.
Gill yawned and opened the window a touch.
Apart from the odd road accident and nuisance neighbours, her job seemed to consist of little else but community-relations bollocks. She hadn’t signed up for that but it was now a major demand of the job.
Her Uncle George had been a detective for over thirty years, and his one consistent piece of advice to her was that she should trust her gut.
‘You need to work to get noticed in this job, Gilly, or you’ll end up a beat copper for the rest of your life,’ he’d cautioned.
Uncle George told her how, over the years, he’d watched people who had begun their career with drive to subconsciously allow that drive to seep away, day after day. Dealing with small-time druggies and lost pets seemed to have that effect.
‘Before you know it, the years just melt away,’ he told her. ‘Those once-ambitious beat coppers resigned themselves to the fact that it was now too late to do anything about it and just accepted their lot.’
Such pathetic acceptance was not in Gill’s nature but she knew George was right. The only way to stop the same thing happening to her was to rise above the chaff and go with her gut.
She needed a way to win recognition from the management for being smart and using her initiative.
‘Do you get the feeling there’s more to this accident than meets the eye?’ She looked over at Jay.
‘Nah,’ he murmured, raising a friendly hand to a group of hoodies as they passed the car at the lights. One of the lads responded with the finger.
‘Cheeky bugger,’ he chuckled.
Gill liked Jay on a personal level, but his lethargic and accepting nature of the job infuriated her. If ever there was a career beat cop, it was him. She wouldn’t get tarred with the same brush.
It was time to put some pressure on the people involved in the Green Road accident to make their official statements. Maybe she’d invest some time of her own, dig around a bit.